Custom Pet Costumes

[Joshex]

Yeah, I was certain someone had mentioned this before, but I searched the forums and couldn't find it. if there was such a thread if someone could link it that'd be great.

 

So, yeah the request is for a pet costume customizer. it doesn't mean every pet will have all costume options, but humanoid pets should be able to change their clothes or face or gender or such to the normal abilities of the average player. other servers seem to have achieved this through the other character costume slots. but I think we can do a custom job, so, what am I suggesting;

 

1: a new contact at Icon that is just for pet customization. (it'll ask you to select the pet you wish to customize the costume of then load the typical costume editor but with the pet as the target.)

if there is more than 1 pet in the summon, ex: 3 robots, it'll give you options to make alternate costumes.

 

2: a new UI for pet customization (based off the original costume editor UI). it'll have to be loaded based on individual pet summon types (so a costume editor specific "summon type" designation will be necessary, EX: Robots, Zombies, Animals), as not all pets may be able to take all costume parts.

 

3: Pet costume slots.

 

4: extend to all pets, mastermind, and lore etc.

 

Again this does not guarantee that all pets will be able to be fully customized, just the humanoid ones. others might just have color or scale adjustments until more alternate costume parts can be designed.

[ArchVileTerror]

It's a popular topic.  Here's a small sample of some of the other threads where it's come up.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/9713-mastermind-pet-clones-andor-female-minions/

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11793-mastermind-pet-customization-no-not-a-rehash-of-this-old-topic/

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15343-mastermind-pet-customization/

 

The most we've got in the way of Homecoming Team acknowledgement of this feature is a GM who said the team saw it was one of -the- most requested features ever, and:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14132-enhancing-new-phantom-army-customization/

So, the tech exists, if a bit less than ideal to implement precisely and functionally, and there are hurdles in the forms of non-humanoid Henchpets and with potential harassment/misconduct . . . but yeah.  And, of course, it has been said many, many times that new UI are an absolute pain to implement, so alternative user experience and interface ideas may be required. 

Not that it's necessary to "keep up the pressure," but it also doesn't hurt to talk about this topic to brainstorm ideas and potential solutions to the highlighted issues.

 

Have at it!

[Joshex]

18 hours ago, ArchVileTerror said:

It's a popular topic.  Here's a small sample of some of the other threads where it's come up.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/9713-mastermind-pet-clones-andor-female-minions/

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11793-mastermind-pet-customization-no-not-a-rehash-of-this-old-topic/

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/15343-mastermind-pet-customization/

 

The most we've got in the way of Homecoming Team acknowledgement of this feature is a GM who said the team saw it was one of -the- most requested features ever, and:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14132-enhancing-new-phantom-army-customization/

So, the tech exists, if a bit less than ideal to implement precisely and functionally, and there are hurdles in the forms of non-humanoid Henchpets and with potential harassment/misconduct . . . but yeah.  And, of course, it has been said many, many times that new UI are an absolute pain to implement, so alternative user experience and interface ideas may be required. 

Not that it's necessary to "keep up the pressure," but it also doesn't hurt to talk about this topic to brainstorm ideas and potential solutions to the highlighted issues.

 

Have at it!

thankyou!

Yeah I figured a UI would be a difficult thing to do, Maybe it would be more possible to create new body region groups in the existing costume editor and merely call that UI with the pet summon as the target.

 

what do I mean?:

 

Right now we have groups such as "head" which has options for helmets or masks and faces and hair and detail 1 detail 2, obviously robots wont be able to accept all these , so we can code robot's head piece as "Robotic Head", and give it access to custom lists of costume options defined by the devs. full helmets might be ok, the clockwork faces would be ok etc.

 

instead of upper body; [pet type] + Upper Body, call list with that name.

 

instead of lower body; [pet type] + Lower Body, call list with that name.

 

etc.

 

so we would in essence use the existing UI but call different lists and buttons instead of the ones a player character might have available, depending on the pet summon type.

 

could even have things like "Wolves" and "Humanoid Wolves" where the costume editor allows you to replace the wolves with any human pet with a wolf head? not sure, I'm not going to dictate what costume options are available for what. I'll leave that to the devs and community, but this would allow us to use the existing UI and just add more options and restrict options based on summon type. still would require another contact at Icon. it could be the same contact and pull up a simple window before the UI with multiple selections like:

1: [edit your costume]
2: [edit a pet's costume]

 

from where for #2 it'd maybe have you drag the power into the window and hit enter. and load the costume editor UI.

[ArchVileTerror]

Hmm, interesting thought . . . make each of the custom Henchpets' components a unique "Weapon" slot to amend to the bottom of each costume file.  That would even allow the Mastermind to have different Henchpets for -each- of their own Costumes!  Pretty massive, but also a cool solution I hadn't thought of before.

 

The immediate issue that comes to my mind with such a proposal is that if you added a whole series of Henchpet Head/Torso/Lower slots using that method, then the game wouldn't be able to stop itself from effectively rendering all 6 of your Henchpets any time your Mastermind was online.  Even at level 1 when you'd effectively only have one Henchpet, this method would call upon the custom files for all six.  As I understand it, the game always has the weapon geometry loaded for a set like Assault Rifle, but just sort of stores it in a "hammerspace" until it's time to visually present.  That's not too extreme for one to three individual assets . . . but then a customized Henchpet would have (lowball) about 20 assets EACH, and that's 120 additional geometry assets loaded for all the Henches . . . I mean, I could definitely see the Legacy Devs just NOPING this due to the hardware of yesteryears, but maybe we're at the point where we can tackle it now?

What kind of load would we be looking at to the active server memory if the all Mastermind Rikti Raid had everyone changing costume slots at the same time?

 

The other issue is the UI changes.  While we've seen that it was possible to adjust the itemized list component of the UI for asymmetrical pieces, we weren't explicitly told how much of pain that was to do.

And the REAL challenge . . . how do you preview your Henchpet's appearance in the costume editor?  I mean, the zoom-in function can zoom to the head or to the torso, and when you have Dual Pistols, it can even invoke a special emote when it zooms.  

So, theoretically, it might be possible to instruct the editor to zoom all the way out to a ring of the Henchpets standing several dozen yards away from the player model in the preview space . . . but what's the feasibility on coding something like that?  How much effort would be invested, and how janky would it be?  If you tried to rotate, it would probably still pivot from the player-character model, so you wouldn't be able to rotate the Henchpets so much as just cycle which one is standing in front of the camera.

To visualize what I mean, go to the Power Customization tab as a Mastermind, and watch the preview of your Pet Summon Power, then rotate the view.  Do this a few times for each cast cycle of the Power, and watch how/where the Henchpet spawns in relative to the player model and the camera view point.

 

I mean, all things considered . . . I'd do it. I'd do it in a heartbeat if I had the technical skill for it.  Jank and "unprofessionalism" be damned.  Having a little unintuitive user experience in -this- game isn't anything new.  And while it's definitely subpar to introduce unintuitive UI/UX, we -do- have a lot of veteran players who would be able to write up guides to help new players with this process.

And the payout would be stellar!

 

So . . . I guess the first test bed should be Phantom Army again?  Or maybe we can use Ice Control to see about making a custom Jack using this technique?